Linking up continuously

February 2018

The ARC announced in February a major batch of projects awarded support under the ARC Linkage Projects scheme.

By contrast to other ARC competitive grant schemes, the agency is now accepting Linkage Project applications on a continuous basis, and is announcing grants throughout the year to increase the responsiveness of the process.

In the 2017 grant round, Linkage Project outcomes were announced every two-three months, including 28 new projects in February, which were awarded a total of $11 million.

Selected Linkage projects announced in February 2018:

Professor Graham Goodwin, The University of Newcastle—$240,000 to improve sugar production operations and electricity co-generation capabilities for the sugar industry and, more broadly, biofuel energy generation in Australia.
Professor Benjamin Eggleton, The University of Sydney—$540,000 for developing new microwave photonic processor technology that will enhance radar systems and electronic-warfare capabilities, and allow more flexible delivery of bandwidth for mobile communication systems.
Professor Christopher Johnson, The University of Tasmania—$401,629 for undertaking research on the threats posed by deer to Tasmania's environments.
Professor Klaus Neumann, Deakin University—$343, 932 for developing new methodologies and strategies to assist major Australian libraries to enhance their library collections of histories of Australia as a multicultural nation.
Dr Changzhi Wu, Curtin University—$228,900 for improving road network operations to optimise traffic control strategies and traffic designs, reduce maintenance costs and improve safety outcomes for transport network users.

To date, the 2017 funding round has delivered a total of $23 million to 56 projects. Most grants were won by some few universities but their success appears not to be linked to general research capacity. Rater these universities may focus more on translating research into the real world than others.

The University of New South Wales won 11 of the 56 project awarded in the 2017 funding round to date, followed by the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney with 6 project each. Together these three universities account for more than 40% of the awarded projects.

By contrast, the University of Queensland, also a Group of Eight university ranking highly in its academic research capacity, won only 2 grants. Overall, the state has only a 7% share in Linkage projects awarded in the 2017 funding round to date, on a per capita basis by far the weakest outcome of any state (see infographic).

Another example is the relatively strong performance of Flinders University and the University of South Australia, each awarded two grants, while the University of Adelaide, another Go8 university relatively strongly performing in academic research, received none.

With six funded projects each Environmental science and Engineering were the most often targeted fields of research, followed by Studies in human society, Medical and health sciences, and Biological sciences, each accounting for five projects.

More information: www.arc.gov.au